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Bridge to the future Currents are flowing for the Canalfront Conceptual Plan by Pe te r Se i d m an
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he plan San Rafael City Council members will see in a few days contains a vision that could help transform an area of the city that has suffered extreme aesthetic neglect. At their Nov. 16 meeting, councilmembers will see the San Rafael Canalfront Conceptual Plan, the result of 18 months of labor. As the name implies, it paints a picture of what could be, maybe, sometime in the future. But it also contains some practical improvements to the Canal that many residents there say are essential to improving their lives. The document blends down-and-dirty jobs, like widening sidewalks, with a wish-list of projects that could enliven a waterfront in the way Petaluma has enhanced its water landscape and integrated it into a community vision. San Rafael’s Canal area sits on a waterfront site that many city planners would envy and that the Canalfront Plan aims to fully utilize. The creation of the plan actually started with a simple vision: building a pedestrianand bicycle-friendly bridge over the canal to connect the Montecito side with the area where most Canal residents live. That concept, which first surfaced in 1999, advanced to the stage where the city prepared engineering studies. Then the subject of cost—estimated to be millions of dollars—raised a roadblock. But the idea was resurrected, thanks in large part to a transportation study conducted a few years ago. In 2002, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission created the Community-Based Transportation Planning Program, aimed
at identifying areas where traffic patterns, as well as buildings and other structures, presented barriers to the mobility of local residents. The idea was to tap resources from residents in minority and low-income communities to work in a collaborative approach that would include input from residents, city governments, congestion management agencies, transit operators and community organizations. The Transportation Planning Program gave birth to the Canal Neighborhood Community-Based Transportation Plan. The cooperative approach continued with the formation of the Canalfront Advisory Committee, which enlisted local residents as well as government officials. The cooperative effort has been a success, according to most participants. “I think from the very beginning, the [San Rafael] community development agency was really conscientious in terms of including the Canal community and the voices of the residents,” says Maite Duran, a member of the Canal Alliance and co-chair of the advisory committee. It’s been a long process. Over the last 18 months, notes Duran, Canal residents have had significant opportunities to provide suggestions and requests. But the unique nature of the Canal community also has presented challenges that Duran says the city could consider, with an eye toward improving the concept of inclusive community planning. Among the principal challenges of creating a community-based design concept in the Canal is the irre- 10 >
›› NEWSGRAMS Pesticide enforcement amended County supervisors agreed Nov. 10 to a plan to improve the enforcement of a 1998 Marin law banning the use of carcinogenic pesticides.The plan calls for $100,000 to help fund the enforcement program, a new Web site (www.co.marin. ca.us) to inform the public about pesticide and herbicide use in Marin, and the appointment of parks superintendent Ed Hulme as the Integrated Pest Management Commission’s coordinator. The changes come nearly five months after Corte Madera resident Paul Apffel discovered 269 violations of the ordinance between 1999 and 2008 (see“Newsgrams,”July 17, 2009). Casino a likely bet for Richmond waterfront Contra Costa supervisors unanimously voted to support a plan that would yield $12 million a year for the county and a major casino-hotel resort at the base of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The project—constructed by the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, who’d struck a previous deal with the city of Richmond to purchase the land—must still go before the Richmond City Baby’s new pair of shoes may be Council and, if approved, could garner the city up to $20 million available soon in Richmond. a year once the resort opens. Plans for the casino feature thousands of slot machines, two hotels, a conference center and 300,000 square feet of retail space, with an agreement to offer 70 percent of its permanent jobs to county residents. MCF blunts climate change with $10M initiative Recently, the Marin Community Foundation announced a five-year, $10-million initiative to enlist Marin residents in reducing the impact of climate change. Among the efforts the foundation is supporting: innovative research to explore the ability of West Marin’s rangelands to absorb carbon from the atmosphere, a process called carbon sequestration. According to a press release, the Marin Carbon Project—a collaboration of scientists, local ranchers, county agencies, nonprofit organizations and others—has thus far received $240,000 in funding to explore“the use of compost, different grazing patters, and even different kinds of plows”in the quest to“permanently remove hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”The foundation will also support other local programs to encourage walking and bicycling, promote energy and water efficiency, reduce vehicular traffic and increase the public’s awareness of and response to climate change—with the initiative’s end goal being a reduction in carbon emissions of over 2 million metric tons,“the equivalent of taking over 326,000 cars off the road.” Shorts... The Marin Energy Authority borrowed another $85,000 from the county in order to continue with its plan to compete with PG&E. Last month the county gave MEA a $210,000 loan as part of the more than $500,000 it had agreed to allot the authority...Sausalito-based AltaRock Geothermal received almost $25 million in federal stimulus money for an engineered geothermal system demo project in Oregon.—Samantha Campos EXTRA! EXTRA! Post your Marin news at ›› pacificsun.com
8 PACIFIC SUN NOVEMBER 13 - NOVEMBER 19, 2009